End of the World as We Know it!

All together now:

“And I feel fine”

I move back to Chicago to live and work and what happens those evil “physicists” who just can’t be content in knowing that it only takes 3 licks to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop have to split it open to find the “charm” inside. By doing so might in fact end the world as we know it.

I get back here only to have it all end? Well to help count down the moments to your doom (or the evaporation of your student loans if your of the college persuasion) here is a countdown clock ticking down the time before the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland is turned on. So aperently if it’s anything that the Swiss do well it’s clocks and very large high-energy particle accelerators, the two just go hand in hand.

Thanks go out to the Wanker we all know and love Richard “Speak Gravely but carry a Talking Stick” Holland for the clock.

Yale Art Student Uses Abortion as an Art Medium

From the Yale Daily News:

Art major Aliza Shvarts ‘08 wants to make a statement.

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts’ project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock . saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion.

But Shvarts insists her concept was not designed for “shock value.”

“I hope it inspires some sort of discourse,” Shvarts said. “Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it’s not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone.”

The “fabricators,” or donors, of the sperm were not paid for their services, but Shvarts required them to periodically take tests for sexually transmitted diseases. She said she was not concerned about any medical effects the forced miscarriages may have had on her body. The abortifacient drugs she took were legal and herbal, she said, and she did not feel the need to consult a doctor about her repeated miscarriages.

Shvarts declined to specify the number of sperm donors she used, as well as the number of times she inseminated herself.

Art major Juan Castillo ‘08 said that although he was intrigued by the creativity and beauty of her senior project, not everyone was as thrilled as he was by the concept and the means by which she attained the result.
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